Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

"They call it youthful idealism / And even I would have to agree with them / Some of us grow up, and it's still there"-Operation Ivy, "Junkie's Running Dry." When I think of coming of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I often find myself attempting to recapture those moments of silence or solitude that still existed in an era before social media and 24 hour news cycles took over. While we had cellphones, they were not the pocket computers of today, social media did not exist as it does now, and people could still use the excuse that they were not at home to answer the phone. No one expected us to be on call at all hours of the day, nor did they battle over political talking points in the stratified way they do now. Instead, we could "turn on, tune in, and drop out" like the previous generation, albeit with different drugs and drama, in ways that are often not available to younger generations. I was a master at "dropping out" in those...

Photo Credit:Chris Wyman One summer after I graduated high school, I worked at a resort in Northern Wisconsin wrangling bears and mowing lawns, but truth be told I spent most of my time collecting garbage. An older, German gentleman, Hans, and I drove around in a blue late 1980s F-150 truck, picking up garbage from assorted cabins around the property. He would play polka music on cassette tapes and tell me stories about his younger days. On the days that he was off work, I would drive without music and collect the beer cans that vacationers left in the cabins. If they left food or beer behind, it was fair game, so I had a seemingly endless supply of cheap beer that summer. I did not buy light beer like Keystone, Coors, Busch, Miller, and others, given that I was a Heineken and Newcastle man in my misspent youth. My friends were pleased when I always had extra beer that no one had to purchase. The bear wrangling was less dangerous than it sounds because they were leery of us...

One summer when I was a kid, perhaps 1990 or 1991, my great aunt enrolled me in nature classes in Cable, Wisconsin. They were held once a month and taught youngsters about wildflowers, animals, and respect for the earth. We would ride in her old tan Mercury Lynx into wilderness that seemed larger and more wooded than near my house; the area was hillier and covered with heavier, older trees. The woods seemed to hang over the narrow roads, some on hills that stretched into the distance. On either side of these roads, it seemed like one slight slip of the wheel would send the car plummeting into the ravine. The telephone poles were tall and felt straighter, pointing down into the crumbling earth. It was very green -- the trees were full of leaves and visible soil was clay red. Cable was about an hour northwest of my hometown in Bayfield County, and the start of the Birkebeiner cross country skiing race. We must have taken highway 13 north to 77 and gone west. I have never returned, bu...

“ Seventh Son” A hazy mist covered the ground in the cemetery. Green saplings bent to the ground. I walked solemnly, looking behind me every couple of minutes. My chest beat and my legs felt tense. I had been meeting my brother in Shadows Grove Cemetery for several years. Well, I guess I couldn’t really call it meeting him. He’s dead. I just walked to the cemetery to talk to him. He was the only person whom I could really trust when he was alive. You see, my dad died before I was born and my mom -- well, she’s crazy. She tells me that I’m crazy for talking to Randall. She says, “He’s dead. When are you gonna realize that? I raised a dip shit kid who talks to fucking angels.” She isn’t all that bad, though. At least, she doesn’t hit me anymore. As I approached his plot, I saw a big and nasty crow. It cawed at me and flew into the grey sky, then alighted near Randall’s gravestone and dashed back into the sky. The sun was beginning to make me tired. I felt it on my skin and s...

Right after school Cecil grabbed his shotgun from his father's rifle cabinet and headed out the door. He took his old BMX out of the garage and slung the gun over his back. He pedaled the bike as fast as he could. Small for his class, he was still waiting for a growth spurt. His grandmother had told him that sometimes it happens later in life. But he wasn't waiting until eighteen or twenty-one. He had outgrown his shit hole town already. He spent most of his time out on state land shooting squirrels or just walking. There was nothing at home that equaled the thrill of just being out in the woods, nothing that equaled the thrill of being among the pines and oaks. He was master of all he surveyed out here. No one came to bother him.             He pedaled his bike down Wilson Road past house after house all of them empty because no one was home from work or school yet. Out here the paint was chipped and the yards were filled wi...